Running in Minneapolis

Separate from the Chain of Lakes, the Midtown Greenway is a paved trail built on a former rail corridor that runs about five and a half miles across south Minneapolis, connecting the Chain of Lakes near Uptown to the Mississippi River near the Sabo Bridge. Much of the Greenway sits in a trench below street level, which means runners cross very few intersections despite passing directly beneath dozens of city streets, making it one of the most uninterrupted running surfaces in Minneapolis. The sunken design also cuts down on wind, which matters in a city where wind off the lakes and river can slow a run considerably in the colder months.

Because the Greenway is separated from street traffic for almost its entire length, it stays busy with bike commuters during rush hour, so runners doing speed work tend to use it either early morning or midday rather than the evening commute window. The trail's eastern end near the Mississippi connects directly into the river paths and the Stone Arch Bridge area, so a runner can start at a Chain of Lakes loop, cut across on the Greenway, and finish along the river without ever running on a city street. The Midtown Greenway Coalition maintains the corridor and hosts cleanup and safety events throughout the year, reflecting how central the trail has become to runners living in the Uptown, Lyn Lake, and Longfellow neighborhoods it passes through.

The Chain of Lakes is actually just one piece of a much larger network called the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway, a system of parkways and paths that loops for roughly fifty miles around the perimeter of Minneapolis, connecting the lakes to the Mississippi River, Minnehaha Creek, and the city's northern and eastern park chains. The full Grand Rounds is one of the most complete park boulevard systems of its kind in the country, largely because the Minneapolis Park Board has been acquiring and connecting the land since the 1880s under a plan that predates most of the city's current street grid. Runners training for the Twin Cities Marathon sometimes use extended sections of the Grand Rounds well beyond the Chain of Lakes to log long runs entirely on car separated paths.

Beyond the lakes, the Grand Rounds includes the Minnehaha Parkway section following Minnehaha Creek out to Minnehaha Falls, as well as the less crowded Victory Memorial Parkway on the city's north side and the East River Parkway that runs along the Mississippi past the University of Minnesota campus. Because so much of the system connects without gaps, a runner based near any of the lakes can build a long run entirely on the Grand Rounds without repeating the same mile twice, something that is unusual for a city of Minneapolis's size. The full loop is popular enough as a goal that some local runners treat completing the entire fifty mile route in a single outing as an unofficial local challenge distinct from any organized race.